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Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Reference Question of the Month: April

Posted by Judy T.

Since being inaugurated in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets, National Poetry Month is now held every April. In consideration of poets and poetry lovers everywhere, here are this month’s trivia questions:

1. One of Longfellow's most famous poems begins: "Listen my children and you shall hear/ Of the midnight ride of ___________."

2. “'The time has come,' the Walrus said,/ 'To talk of many things' " was written by _________________.

3. What is the name for an unrhymed form of verse of Japanese origin having three lines usually containing five, seven, and five syllables respectively?

4. He was born in Alloway, Ayrshire, on Jan. 25, 1759 and is regarded as the National Poet of Scotland. Besides being recognized for his spectacular poetry, he is well known for being a notorious womanizer. By the end of his short life he had fathered fourteen children, nine of them out of wedlock, by six different mothers. Who is he?

5. Who is the current Poet Laureate of the United States?

6. This famous 19th century English poet is the female half of a famous literary couple. She wrote Sonnets from the Portuguese during their courtship, and she was forced to wed in secret because her father had forbidden any of his children to marry. Who is she?

Answers:

1. Paul Revere

2. Lewis Carroll

3. haiku

4. Robert Burns

5. Philip Levine is the 2011-2012 Poet Laureate of the U.S. According to the Library of Congress “His plainspoken lyricism has, for half a century, championed the art of telling ‘The Simple Truth’—about working in a Detroit auto factory, as he has, and about the hard work we do to make sense of our lives.”

6. Elizabeth Barrett Browning In 1846 she and Robert Browning eloped to Italy and married there. She dedicated Sonnets from the Portuguese to her husband.